


nothing goes unspoken when the colours unfold

by cynical_optimist



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 03:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17573162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynical_optimist/pseuds/cynical_optimist
Summary: “Jacqui Green,” Aria says. “Right?”“That’s me,” Jacqui replies, then smirks. “You a fan, Joie?”“In all the ways that count,” Aria replies, though she’d been a little busy at the height of Jacqui’s career as a pilot. “You’ve got a good right hook, you know.”-Jacqui and Aria and a very big robot.





	nothing goes unspoken when the colours unfold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merthurlin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merthurlin/gifts).



> Hi, methurlin! I hope you like this <3 Obviously, I went with your Pacific Rim prompt, but it was so hard choosing between them all! Anyway, I hope you had a happy holidays, and a wonderful start to 2019.
> 
> Many many thanks to Patrick for betaing this for me (and [Sarah](http://canonicallyanxious.tumblr.com/), as always, for looking over it <3). You can find Patrick on [ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsoleCowboy) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/NightinGem) <3
> 
> Title from Valis Alp's "Fading". You can find that song, along with others that helped me write this fic, in the spotify playlist for this fic [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/lydia_knife/playlist/31e7VHkebJ16rj1maIsv6z?si=e04f0JH4QQC_g38UdU201g).

  
  


Aria meets Jacqui Green in the hallway outside the Shatterdome’s mess hall, just a week after they were both kicked out of Aria’s favourite bar for fighting.

“Oh,” Jacqui says, on her way out as Aria is on her way in. “You’re….” She’s as tall as she was the night they met— all muscle and metal and cocky grins. That’s entirely the reason she’d fought her then, of course— but then, she’d thought she was a hot, anonymous woman in a bar, not a future coworker.

Aria had realised her misstep the morning after the incident, when Cass had sighed in her direction and shown her the new-old recruit’s file. She had green hair in that photo, rather than the dark purple of the night before, and seemed— younger, lighter. It was definitely her, though. “Seriously, Aria?” they’d asked. “We spent  _ months _ convincing her to come back to piloting.”

“We had fun,” she’d defended then. “It’s fine.”

Standing in front of Jacqui, she’s still pretty confident in that assertion. It’s  _ fine _ . “Yep!” she answers. “Uh— Aria Joie— I work here.” She holds out her hand. 

Jacqui nods. “Right,” she says after a moment, brow furrowed. After another pause, she takes Aria’s hand, her prosthetic cool to the touch.

“Jacqui Green,” Aria says. “Right?”

“That’s me,” Jacqui replies, then smirks. “You a fan, Joie?”

“In all the ways that count,” Aria replies, though she’d been a little busy at the height of Jacqui’s career as a pilot. “You’ve got a good right hook, you know.” She’s not sure the bruises have faded; she’s not sure she wants them to.

“I know,” Jacqui says, still grinning— and it’s the same grin as the other night, the same grin that had made Aria’s heart jump even as the bouncers tore them apart. When Jacqui was a pilot, Aria had been too busy with her own fight against the Kaiju to pay attention to official pilots or their press junkets. If she’d had the time, Jacqui’s grin wouldn’t have been something she’d forget. ’“You aren’t so bad yourself.”

Aria shrugs. Somehow, neither of them have let go of the other’s hand. “I’ve been in my fair share of scraps,” she says. “In and out of the Jaeger.”

“You pilot?” Jacqui asks.

“Used to.” She leaves it at that— though maybe her story isn’t as tragic as Jacqui’s fall from piloting. Almost everyone involved is still alive and present, after all, if a little ragged. 

Jacqui nods, says nothing.

“You settling in?” Aria asks.

“Well enough,” Jacqui replies. “It’s different to my last Shatterdome, but not so much I can’t find my way around.”

“I’ll show you around sometime,” says Aria. “I’ve lived here for a few years, now; I can show you all the best spots.” 

Jacqui tilts her head. “Sounds good,” she says. “I don’t have much to do before I’m assigned a new copilot, so.”

“We’ll find a time,” Aria says, and looks back toward the mess hall. “When you’re not about to eat, maybe.”

Jacqui nods again. “Sometime before my test fights.”

“That’s pretty soon,” Aria says. “I look forward to seeing you fight.”

“You going to be there?” Jacqui asks. “You’ve got to be low on candidates if you’re bringing old pilots back.”

“We’ll call it a rematch,” Aria says. “Getting thrown out doesn’t count as a win for either of us, so we’re starting even.”

“It’s a date,” Jacqui grins, and finally— too soon, really— she drops Aria’s hand. “I’ll let you get to lunch.” Aria’s hand is cool from the contact with the metal, and she lets it fall to her side as Jacqui walks past her.

-

-

The sharp crack of stick hitting stick fills the training room, where Aria rests against the wall with the other potentials. Technically, she’s not supposed to be assessing— that’s for Orth, this time— but it’s obvious that Jacqui and her partner aren’t evenly matched. The other girl goes down once, then twice, then once again.

Orth steps forward. “That’s enough,” he says, and the next person steps forward. Aria shuffles up the wall, feeling a little like a trainee again. It’s been a while since she had to go through this process—the last time was soon after she and Cass stopped piloting, maybe. They were more comfortable in retirement than she was.

These days, though, things are more desperate, and Aria was pulled into the shallow pool of candidates to pilot with one Jacqui Green. She doesn’t mind, of course; it’s a hell of a lot better than sitting in Mission Control and watching pilot after pilot fail to return.

The next person goes down thrice, but manages to get one win in. Still, not quite good enough.

Aria shuffles up the wall again. Jacqui is powerful and fearsome when she fights, raw and practiced in every move. Her prosthetics move smoothly— they might be from the same manufacturer as Aria’s, come to think of it. She’ll have to ask her later.

As Jacqui takes down her next opponent with a smooth legsweep, she looks over at Aria. Her mouth is set into a wide grin, one eyebrow raised. She hasn’t even broken a sweat.

“Ready for our rematch, babe?” she asks, as Orth nods at the almost pilot picking xemself up from the floor.

Aria steps forward, takes a staff. It’s been years since she’s done this particular dance, but she’s fought with Cass in this room every day since they came to the Shatterdome.

“You know I am,” she replies, shifting the staff in her hand— and that’s when Jacqui strikes, so fast and so hard that Aria can hardly get her staff up in time, can hardly keep it steady under the jarring blow.

Aria grins, and Jacqui grins back, laughing. Aria strikes, then, and Jacqui parries— and from there, it’s all that Aria can do to keep up. Fighting with Jacqui is unfamiliar, and difficult— but smooth as every fight with Cass, footsteps falling into a complex dance— step, and stand, and move away— and move closer, close enough to see the sweat beginning to bead on Jacqui’s forehead. Aria’s always fought best up close.

She loses, and then wins, and then wins again, and then loses— but only part of her is keeping track. By this point, they’ve fought long enough to come to some sort of conclusion, but Aria’s not going to bring an end to it. The partner isn’t familiar, but the pattern is. She half expects to reach out with her mind and find Jacqui waiting on the other end.

She strikes, and parries, and out of the corner of her eye Orth marks something down on his clipboard, and Jacqui gets a strike it at that moment, knocking Aria off her feet— and Aria pulls her down with her, and they fall to the mat and the tense, connected atmosphere shatters.

“Good job,” Jacqui says, as she lifts herself off Aria and reaches out to help pull her to her feet. Aria accepts, taking a deep breath, and Jacqui tugs her up. Aria stumbles, almost stepping on her toe before shifting back. Her muscles ache.

“You too,” she replies, and looks over to Orth. There are two potential pilots waiting, still.

“We done?” asks Jacqui. “I think—” For a moment, her expression shutters. “That was pretty demonstrative, yeah?”

Orth nods, and doesn’t say anything, but Aria knows— she’s worked for him for years, worked in this for longer. She meets Jacqui’s eyes again.

-

-

Aria steps into the Conn-pod of her Jaeger— and for a moment it’s like she’s stepped back through the years, into a barely held-together Jaeger with Cass and Mako by her side. But when she looks to her right, it’s Jacqui beside her, dressed in her matching drivesuit, and Mako is working on his own Jaeger, and Cass and AuDy are up in mission control. Echoes of the past peek around sleek walls, out of nooks and crannies. Aria had fought and fought and almost died in one of these; her best and worst moments are bound to ragged drivesuits and machinery that fell apart at the edges.

But then, that’s the lot of a pilot, isn’t it?

Jacqui stares around the cockpit, mouth pressed into a line. She hasn’t been in a Jaeger in years, either; how could she have been? The fact that she’s in one  _ now _ says more about the state of the war with the Kaiju and the Shatterdome’s funding than Jacqui’s desire to drift again— to fight again, with someone else at her side. When Aria catches her eye for a moment, she swallows, then looks out across the ocean through the glass of the cockpit.

Aria has given an arm and years of her life to fighting the Jaegers, and will give until the war is over; how much more has Jacqui lost already?

“Are you ready?” Aria asks, and Jacqui looks over. She shrugs.

“Guess we have to be,” she answers.

“If you can’t do this…” Aria starts, but Jacqui shakes her head.

“It’s this or let the world die, babe,” she says.

Aria nods, takes a deep breath. “Let’s save the world again,” she says, even though this is just a test, even though the Jaeger sent out if anything were to happen right now is Mako’s— even though, ultimately, this might not mean much at all after all the drift tests they’ve had since that first fight. They’re compatible, they know this.

To be in a Jaeger, though— to  _ drift _ in a Jaeger,  as close as one person can be to another—

“Let’s do this,” Jacqui says, and fits her helmet over her head. Aria echoes the action.

“Ready to initiate neural handshake,” AuDy says over the intercom. Aria takes a deep breath, watches Jacqui, out of the corner of her eye, do the same.

“We’re ready,” Aria replies. She looks again around the inside of the Conn-pod— sleek and clean, but obviously more scrambled together than a Jaeger at the beginning of the war might be. She smiles. That’s fine, it just makes everything a little more familiar.

Again, she looks over at Jacqui. Jacqui, already turned her way, meets her eyes. She nods.

Around them, the Jaeger sparks to life— Aria’s vision tints blue at the edges, and she keeps her eyes on Jacqui.

“Don’t chase the R.A.B.I.T,” Jacqui says, suddenly, and Aria doesn’t know who she’s saying it to. Aria? Herself? It could easily be both.

“We’ll be fine,” Aria assures her. “It’s fine.” She keeps her eyes locked on Jacqui’s, tries to project as much steady purpose to her as she can. Already, the drift is forming, and Aria feels her desperate assurance echoed back at her.

And then— everything is kaiju blue.

_ She is on a stage, and thousands of adoring fans scream at her and she sings — and she listens to the new Aria Joie track as she does her morning run, Jillian huffing along beside her — Cass stands beside her in their makeshift Connpod, murmuring about the stupidity of their plan, but a resolute smile tugs — she tugs at her father’s hand, seven and three quarters and determined not to be late — she’s late for a meeting with management, but who cares about contracts when the world is at stake? — the world is dying, but Jillian is determined to do something, and what can Jacqui do but join her? — Aria doesn’t know how to convince her friends to join her in this ridiculous crusade, but the piloting schools won’t take her seriously and she has to do  _ **_something_ ** _ — something is wrong, and Jillian knows it, but she powers forward, as though she can’t feel her pain, as though the drift— the drift is like nothing she could’ve ever imagined; it’s her and Mako and Cass and her and all of them all together — together she and Jillian lift one foot, then the other, and they are moving, they are one, they are pilots — piloting was never safe, but she thought she’d do it until the war ended — she’d thought she and Jillian would be together until they both died — she’d thought — she’d thought — the kaiju tears into the Jaeger and she can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t feel anything but the yawning gap at her side — her side aches from training with Cass, but she has to keep battle-ready— she stares at the empty space in her bed for hours — she could argue with Cass for hours, but they made their decision, and Mako can pilot on his own now, and she loves AuDy but she can’t drift with them,  but they’re losing, they’re running low on pilots — sure, she misses being a pilot sometimes, but it’s easier, this way; she protects those she needs to protect, and fight those she needs to fight — the fight isn’t hers, not anymore, but she has to do  _ **_something_ ** _ — the new Aria Joie song is on the radio, and she hums along, because it’s been years but this music has been with her in her worst times — she hums a few lines, thinks of the instruments back in her room, of putting together a song despite the million contracts she’d be breaking—  _

“Play that for me sometime?” Jacqui asks, and the words are in Aria’s mind and Jacqui’s mouth and hanging between them, soft.

“Left side and right side calibrated,” AuDy says, and Aria breathes in, and Jacqui breathes out.

“It’s not finished,” Aria answers, as they lift their arms together, test out their legs. The drift floats between them **,** busy but steady. Aria and Jacqui close their left hand, and in the echoes Jillian and Cass and Mako do the same.

“The drift is holding steady,” AuDy informs them, and that very steadiness wraps warm around Aria’s rib cage, around Jacqui’s.

“But you can help me figure it out,” Aria continues, “if you want.” She doesn’t have to turn to know Jacqui is smiling, but she does. She’s beautiful when she smiles.

“I’d like that,” Jacqui says, and together they breathe in, and breathe out, and rest steady in each other.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Background information/extra content:  
> \- Yes, Aria, Mako, and Cass piloted a makeshit Jaeger together. AuDy was possibly the Jaeger/AI in the Jaeger??? Trying to fit synthetic characters (and aliens!) into a universe that has established robots and aliens is difficult lol  
> \- Mako now pilots a Jaeger with Larry!  
> \- Cass and AuDy are fake dating in the background. This fic isn't long enough to have a subplot but if it did, that would be it. Maybe one day I'll write a companion fic, but that means figuring out how a fish-person and robot fit into the Pacific Rim world oops.  
> \- Jillian comes back at some point! I considered writing established Aria/Jacqui focusing on dealing with that, but ended up liking this idea better.  
> \- Mostly the background of this universe is me trying to fit things together and screaming.
> 
> Find me on twitter @spiderangst, or on tumblr @boxesfullofthoughts and chat to me about FatT!


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